The 1972 horror flick known as Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things is one of the weirdest zombie movies out there. It’s every bit as chilling as Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, at least during the last half hour of the movie. The film was directed by Bob Clark (Black Christmas, A Christmas Story) on a shoestring budget of 50,000. Alan Ormsby, the star of the film, co-wrote the movie with Bob Clark.

In this film, sadistic, eccentric Alan (Alan Ormsby, Deathdream, My Bodyguard), who is dressed like a giant piece of fruit stripe gum, and a theater troupe travel by boat to a small island off the coast of Miami to a graveyard for buried criminals. He leads a group of his friends that include Paul (Paul Cronin) Val (Valerie Mamches), Jeff (Jeff Gilen), Anya (Anya Ormsby, Alan’s wife at the time) to go with him. While inside a caretaker’s house, Alan digs up a few things to start a ritual! Using a grimoire, Alan begins the ritual which includes taking a dead man of a grave. He digs up the dead body of his friend Orville Dunworth (Seth Sklarey) and starts to raise the dead. The zombies all start to rise from their graves, killing the cast who are now stuck in the caretaker’s house! If they try to escape, they will be snacks for the zombies!

Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things is one of the great cult horror classics from the seventies, and should be watched every Halloween season. The film is proof that even with the smallest of budgets, you can still scare the pants off of viewers! The story picks up after the first hour when the zombies begin their reign of terror. Alan Ormsby is the clear star of the picture and some of the things he says and does in the movie are as wicked as it gets!

For its 50th Anniversary, VCI Entertainment debuts Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things in UHD format and overall, I was impressed with how it looked. This is the same 87-minute uncut version, not the shorter UK release. The film to me is a clear upgrade over their previously released Blu-ray. The video now has a nice, polished look to it. The movie still has that seventies look to it but not nearly as much as it once did. Colors look good, particularly reds and yellows. The textures look strong and there are lots of details to the scenery and close-ups of the actors’ faces. Black levels for the most part seem fine, with good shadow detail, but there are a couple of scenes that are quite dark and was a little bit hard to see what was happening in the movie which could be due to how the movie was shot. Film grain was present, giving the film an organic look. VCI has gone with SDR, as opposed to HDR for this release. Arguably, the movie might have looked even better if HDR was used.

The audio track for Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things LPCM 2.0. The dialogue is crisp and clear, but it was Carl Zittrer’s creepy musical numbers that stood out and sounded by far the most aggressive. Action sounds, and background noises are perfectly balanced with the dialogue, which was perfectly in sync for this UHD. English subtitles are offered for this release.

There are lots of extras for this release. On the UHD there is a new ninety-minute documentary called “Dreaming of Death: Bob Clark’s Horror Films” that has interviews with the cast and crew of Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things. There is the commentary track with Alan Ormsby, Jane Daly and Anya Cronin that is from the previous Blu-ray. A trailer is also on the UHD disc.

There are two Blu-ray discs which are stacked on top of each other. Blu-ray discs are hard to damage, so there shouldn’t be any problems with the two of them stacked up. The first Blu-ray is the movie which serves as a counterpart to the UHD, while the second Blu-ray disc has lots of supplemental materials.

The supplemental disc includes a new 2022 interview with Alan Ormsby. Legacy extras are part of the package which includes

Memories of Bob Clark: A video tribute to the late director from 2007.

More extras ported over include the 2007 Q&A at the Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival, Confessions of a Grave Digger: Video Interview with Ken Goch, a cool photo and poster gallery, and a pair of music videos by The Deadthings entitled “Dead Girls Don’t Say No” and “Cemetery Mary”.

On top of that, we get an original theatrical trailer and radio spots.

This offering from VCI also includes a new liner-notes booklet written by Patrick McCabe, reversible sleeve art, and a slipcover to boot for its initial release! It’s everything an extras junkie could ask for!

Outside of going with SDR and not HDR for this UHD from VCI Entertainment, this seems to have been given a lot of time and effort, resulting in a well-done release in my opinion. The audio and video to me are the best Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things has ever looked or sounded, along with the immense extras package which has a couple of new supplements to go with the legacy extras! Highly recommended!

Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things

Director- Bob Clark

Cast- Alan Ormsby, Valerie Mamches

Country of Origin- USA

Distributor – VCI Entertainment

Number of Discs – 3 (one UHD, 2 Blu-rays)

Reviewed by – David Steigman

Date –11/27/2022